Posts Tagged ‘Spotlights’

Spotlights have shared a video for the track ‘Mountains Are Forever’ taken from their latest album Love & Decay which is out now via Ipecac Recordings. The video arrives as the band commence their first headline tour across the US, having previously shared the stage Deftones, Melvins, Quicksand, Hum, Glassjaw, Pelican and Pallbearer – dates below.

Spotlights have covered some significant ground and developed a critical mass in a comparatively short time-frame: in just three years, they’ve gone from slipping out their D.I.Y. debut, Tidals, to touring with Deftones, Melvins, Quicksand, Hum, and Glassjaw to Pelican and Pallbearer, thanks to a feature in Brooklyn Vegan. And so the story goes that Ipecac Recordings co-founders Mike Patton and Greg Werckman fell under the band’s spell and signed them. And lo, Spotlights’ Ipecac debut, Seismic, arrived in in the Autumn of 2017.

Follow-up Love & Decay picks up where its precursor left off, and launches with a deluge of crushing weight, with ‘Continue the Capsize’ crashing on with a wall of simmering guitars, slow, pounding percussion, and shuddering bass, a slow, low-end orientated doom-laden sonic assault, over which taut led guitar lines build a web of tension… heavy doom meets post-punk dynamics… and then it all goes mellow. That gritty, dingy bass still churns beneath it all, and as dream guitars and vocals call to mind early Ride, the bass remains pure doom.

Hybridisation is nothing new, but on Love & Decay, Spotlights have hit a magnificent sweet spot that forges the perfect balance between wistful and weighty: ‘The Particle Noise’ is all the 90s shoegaze, slowed down, and rendered with all the throb, all the weight, and it’s the noise of particles shattering against one another. The vocals are melodic, laid-back and fragile, and while the guitars are layered, textured and luscious, they’re also dense, distorted and cranked up to the pain threshold. When the midsection hits, the sludge factor soars to 10 and the decibels rocket and it’s like a punch in the stomach with a mess of pulverising low-end which feels like a dangerous undercurrent dragging hard beneath gentle, lapping waves.

‘Far from Falling’ slips into proggy post-rock territory, with an epic slow-build and sustained crescendo. It’s somehow entirely unpretentious, and works in context: as the e-bow-driven guitar comes to the fore, the enormity of the sound becomes utterly captivating and wholly immersive.

Landing at the mid-point, ‘Xerox Mix’ is the shortest song on the album, and has the most overtly pop tones, but at the same time is propelled by driving grunge guitars, overdriven and up in the mix.

The second half of the album shows no let-up in intensity, and again maintains the balance between emotive vulnerability and brutal force, with ‘Mountains are Forever’ hurling forth a volcanic tempest in which the gnarled metal vocal is all but buried in a deluge of thick, molten guitar and pulverising bass.

It all guides the way to the final track, the eleven-minute ‘The Beauty of Forgetting’, which brings everything together: beginning with delicate, chiming notes, it builds and builds to a sustained crescendo that roars. And when it ends, I find myself feeling empty, and somehow altered.

Love & Decay sees Spotlights do shoegaze in the vein of Justin Broderick’s Jesu: epic, expansive, emotive, blending ethereal with crushing weight, it’s a potent cocktail that stirs deep emotions while vibrating the physical being to achieve maximum resonance and optimal impact. And that impact, while almost impossible to articulate, is uniquely profound.

And the bonus track, ‘Sleepwalker’, which appears on the physical editions, is definitely worthwhile, too.

Spotlights, the Brooklyn-based band whose music finds “that perfect balance between crushing heaviness and dreamier melodies” (WFPK), release Love & Decay on April 26 via Ipecac Recordings. Spotlights’ music is iron tone in a velvet glove. They strike with full force, perfectly balancing the weight and sound spectrum of each instrument. And yet it’s a weight that’s also sublime in it’s beauty, with dream-like vocals encased in the mix of subharmonics. A rich and unctuous vibration that melts in your ears, nourishes your brain, and engulfs you with their warmth, like the gravity of a small planet.

"The Age of Decay encapsulates everything we do on this record,” explains guitar player/singer Mario Quintero. “Musically, it has some of the heaviest moments as well as the most dynamic and melodic. It shows little bits of what we get into throughout the entire album in one track. Lyrically, it reflects on personal points in my and Sarah’s relationship, how things grew from when we met, moving around the country and chasing this thing together. The juxtaposition about love against this backdrop of a world that can be hard to deal with.” Mario continues “It’s intangible, It’s intense. It’s beautiful. There’s an impending darkness underneath everything and a sense of unease, but it’s also honest and vulnerable. It’s just really important to us. Regardless of why anyone might react, that’s why we do it.”

As a taster, they’ve aired ‘The Age of Decay’, which you can listen to here:

NYC trio Spotlights continue their evolution with alluring new music, as the latest track "Kiss The Ring" emerges. This warmly enveloping melodious track features Allen Epley from The Life And Times with whom they will soon be touring – dates below. The news closely follows their recent five-track EP, titled Hanging By Faith, which includes a stirring rendition of The Cure’s “Faith” as well as the cinematic song, “The Hanging (Hang Us All)” and adds to their repertoire also including two full length albums, the second of which Seismic, was released around this time last year via Ipecac. We can expect more "stylishly forward-thinking atmospheric" music (Metal Hammer) to follow from this trio in the near future. For now, bathe in the powerfully tender sounds of "Kiss The Ring" at the link below.

Mario Quintero’s remix of ‘Ghost of a Glowing Forest’ (‘Till Darkness Comes Out’) is quite the contrast: a sprawling, murky, dubby beast that transitions from near-ambience to slow industrial thud, it sits between NIN and Portishead.

‘The Size of a Planet’, here reworked by Void Mains and retitled ‘I’ve Giant’ accentuates the heavy, bass-led doom drone that lies beneath the graceful lead parts on the album version, and draws it out to almost seven minutes. It’s pretty hefty. In combination, they make for a strong release, and while standing well in their own right, serve to return the attention to the album that spawned them.

The rendition of ‘Faith’ is utterly breathtaking. They’ve not messed with the original in terms of form or structure, and it’s remarkably faithful (sorry) and respectful – but with the heavy guitar work and even heavier drumming, it amps up the intensity to epic levels.

Brooklyn-based trio Spotlights are releasing Hanging By Faith, a five-song EP featuring remixes of tracks from their 2017 LP Seismic by Void Manes and ISIS/Palms’ Aaron Harris via Ipecac on June 15th. The fifth song on the EP, ‘Faith’, is a cover of The Cure classic. It faithfully captures the bleak atmosphere of the original while bringing new dimensions, additional weight, and and expansive post-rock vibe. Listen to it here: